This book is the first volume in the “unmourning” trilogy. Here, the text studies mourning and melancholia within and around psychoanalysis, analyzing the writings of such thinkers as Freud, ...
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This book is the first volume in the “unmourning” trilogy. Here, the text studies mourning and melancholia within and around psychoanalysis, analyzing the writings of such thinkers as Freud, Nietzsche, Lessing, Heinse, Artaud, Keller, Stifter, Kafka, and Kraus. The book maintains that we must shift the way we read literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis to go beyond traditional Oedipal structures. The book argues that the idea of the crypt has had a surprisingly potent influence on psychoanalysis, and it shows how society’s disturbed relationship with death and dying, our inability to let go of loved ones, has resulted in technology to form more and more crypts for the dead by preserving them—both physically and psychologically—in new ways.Less

Aberrations of Mourning

Laurence A. Rickels

Published in print: 2011-07-13

This book is the first volume in the “unmourning” trilogy. Here, the text studies mourning and melancholia within and around psychoanalysis, analyzing the writings of such thinkers as Freud, Nietzsche, Lessing, Heinse, Artaud, Keller, Stifter, Kafka, and Kraus. The book maintains that we must shift the way we read literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis to go beyond traditional Oedipal structures. The book argues that the idea of the crypt has had a surprisingly potent influence on psychoanalysis, and it shows how society’s disturbed relationship with death and dying, our inability to let go of loved ones, has resulted in technology to form more and more crypts for the dead by preserving them—both physically and psychologically—in new ways.

Decades of research indicate the important connections among academic motivation and achievement, social relationships, and school culture. However, much of this research has been conducted in ...
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Decades of research indicate the important connections among academic motivation and achievement, social relationships, and school culture. However, much of this research has been conducted in homogenous American schools serving middle class, average achieving, Anglo-student populations. This book argues that school culture is a reflection of the society in which the school is embedded and comprises various aspects, including individualism, competition, cultural stereotypes, and extrinsically guided values and rewards. Chapters address three specific conceptual questions: How do differences in academic motivation for diverse groups of students change over time? How do students' social cognitions influence their motivational processes and outcomes in school? And what has been done to enhance academic motivation? To answer this last question, the chapters describe empirically validated intervention programs for improving academic motivation in students from elementary school through college.Less

Academic Motivation and the Culture of School in Childhood and Adolescence

Published in print: 2008-07-30

Decades of research indicate the important connections among academic motivation and achievement, social relationships, and school culture. However, much of this research has been conducted in homogenous American schools serving middle class, average achieving, Anglo-student populations. This book argues that school culture is a reflection of the society in which the school is embedded and comprises various aspects, including individualism, competition, cultural stereotypes, and extrinsically guided values and rewards. Chapters address three specific conceptual questions: How do differences in academic motivation for diverse groups of students change over time? How do students' social cognitions influence their motivational processes and outcomes in school? And what has been done to enhance academic motivation? To answer this last question, the chapters describe empirically validated intervention programs for improving academic motivation in students from elementary school through college.

One of the most important questions about children's development involves how knowledge acquisition depends on the effect of language experience. To what extent, and in what ways, is a child's ...
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One of the most important questions about children's development involves how knowledge acquisition depends on the effect of language experience. To what extent, and in what ways, is a child's cognitive development influenced by their early experience of, and access to, language? Likewise, what are the effects on development of impaired access to language? This book confronts directly the issue of how possessing an enhanced or impaired access to language influences children's development. Its focus is on learning environments, theory of mind understanding, and the process of deriving meaning from conversations. The book features chapters which are concerned with bilingualism, deafness, atypical child development, and development in cultures with limited vocabularies in areas such as number concepts. Throughout, it maps out what is known about the interface between language and cognitive development and the prospects for the future directions in research and applied settings.Less

Access to Language and Cognitive Development

Published in print: 2011-12-15

One of the most important questions about children's development involves how knowledge acquisition depends on the effect of language experience. To what extent, and in what ways, is a child's cognitive development influenced by their early experience of, and access to, language? Likewise, what are the effects on development of impaired access to language? This book confronts directly the issue of how possessing an enhanced or impaired access to language influences children's development. Its focus is on learning environments, theory of mind understanding, and the process of deriving meaning from conversations. The book features chapters which are concerned with bilingualism, deafness, atypical child development, and development in cultures with limited vocabularies in areas such as number concepts. Throughout, it maps out what is known about the interface between language and cognitive development and the prospects for the future directions in research and applied settings.

Achieving College Dreams tells the story of a remarkable partnership between a public research university and charter district to create an exemplar early college high school for low-income and ...
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Achieving College Dreams tells the story of a remarkable partnership between a public research university and charter district to create an exemplar early college high school for low-income and first-generation college youth—launched to make good on the American ideal of providing excellence with equity in secondary education. California College Preparatory Academy is the result of the more than 10-year collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley and Aspire Public Schools. Reflecting a diversity of voices from students to superintendents, this book charts the journey from the decision to open a school to the second class of high school graduates, all of whom were accepted into four-year colleges. It captures struggle, improvement, and possibility as it takes readers inside the workings of the partnership, the development of the school, and spillover of effects across district and university. Confronting the challenge of interweaving rigor and support, the authors explore such critical ingredients as teacher–student advisories; school transition; the home–school divide; a supportive college-preparatory culture; teaching with depth, relational power, and equity; forging an academic identity; and scaling up. At a time of sharply unequal schools and glaring disparities in college readiness, this book uniquely extends the knowledge base about how to better prepare underserved students for college eligibility and success. The book also serves as a clarion call for universities to step up to the plate and partner with districts in achieving transformative secondary school reform benefitting all students.Less

Achieving College Dreams : How a University-Charter District Partnership Created an Early College High School

Published in print: 2016-05-01

Achieving College Dreams tells the story of a remarkable partnership between a public research university and charter district to create an exemplar early college high school for low-income and first-generation college youth—launched to make good on the American ideal of providing excellence with equity in secondary education. California College Preparatory Academy is the result of the more than 10-year collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley and Aspire Public Schools. Reflecting a diversity of voices from students to superintendents, this book charts the journey from the decision to open a school to the second class of high school graduates, all of whom were accepted into four-year colleges. It captures struggle, improvement, and possibility as it takes readers inside the workings of the partnership, the development of the school, and spillover of effects across district and university. Confronting the challenge of interweaving rigor and support, the authors explore such critical ingredients as teacher–student advisories; school transition; the home–school divide; a supportive college-preparatory culture; teaching with depth, relational power, and equity; forging an academic identity; and scaling up. At a time of sharply unequal schools and glaring disparities in college readiness, this book uniquely extends the knowledge base about how to better prepare underserved students for college eligibility and success. The book also serves as a clarion call for universities to step up to the plate and partner with districts in achieving transformative secondary school reform benefitting all students.

Words are the building blocks of language. An understanding of how words are learned is thus central to any theory of language acquisition. Although there has been a surge in our understanding of ...
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Words are the building blocks of language. An understanding of how words are learned is thus central to any theory of language acquisition. Although there has been a surge in our understanding of children's vocabulary growth, theories of word learning focus primarily on object nouns. Word learning theories must explain not only the learning of object nouns, but also the learning of other, major classes of words — verbs and adjectives. Verbs form the hub of the sentence because they determine the sentence's argument structure. Researchers throughout the world recognize how our understanding of language acquisition can be at best partial if we cannot comprehend how verbs are learned. This book enters the relatively uncharted waters of early verb learning, focusing on the universal, conceptual foundations for verb learning, and how these foundations intersect with the burgeoning language system.Less

Action Meets Word : How children learn verbs

Kathryn A. Hirsh-PasekRoberta M. Golinkoff

Published in print: 2006-04-27

Words are the building blocks of language. An understanding of how words are learned is thus central to any theory of language acquisition. Although there has been a surge in our understanding of children's vocabulary growth, theories of word learning focus primarily on object nouns. Word learning theories must explain not only the learning of object nouns, but also the learning of other, major classes of words — verbs and adjectives. Verbs form the hub of the sentence because they determine the sentence's argument structure. Researchers throughout the world recognize how our understanding of language acquisition can be at best partial if we cannot comprehend how verbs are learned. This book enters the relatively uncharted waters of early verb learning, focusing on the universal, conceptual foundations for verb learning, and how these foundations intersect with the burgeoning language system.

The emerging field of action science is characterized by a diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches which share the basic functional belief that evolution has optimized cognitive ...
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The emerging field of action science is characterized by a diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches which share the basic functional belief that evolution has optimized cognitive systems to serve the demands of action. This book brings together the constitutive approaches of action science in a single source, covering the relationship of action to such cognitive functions as perception, attention, memory, and volition. Each chapter, written by a different scientist in the field, offers a tutorial-like description of a major line of inquiry. Considered as one unit, the chapters reflect a rapidly growing field, and provide a forum for comparison and possible integration of approaches. After discussing core questions about how actions are controlled and learned, the book considers ecological approaches to action science; neurocognitive approaches to action understanding and attention; developmental approaches to action science; social actions, including imitation and joint action; and the relationships between action and the conceptual system (grounded cognition) and between volition and action.Less

Action Science : Foundations of an Emerging Discipline

Published in print: 2013-02-01

The emerging field of action science is characterized by a diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches which share the basic functional belief that evolution has optimized cognitive systems to serve the demands of action. This book brings together the constitutive approaches of action science in a single source, covering the relationship of action to such cognitive functions as perception, attention, memory, and volition. Each chapter, written by a different scientist in the field, offers a tutorial-like description of a major line of inquiry. Considered as one unit, the chapters reflect a rapidly growing field, and provide a forum for comparison and possible integration of approaches. After discussing core questions about how actions are controlled and learned, the book considers ecological approaches to action science; neurocognitive approaches to action understanding and attention; developmental approaches to action science; social actions, including imitation and joint action; and the relationships between action and the conceptual system (grounded cognition) and between volition and action.

More than one third of the human brain is devoted to the processes of seeing — vision is after all the main way in which we gather information about the world. But human vision is a dynamic process ...
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More than one third of the human brain is devoted to the processes of seeing — vision is after all the main way in which we gather information about the world. But human vision is a dynamic process during which the eyes continually sample the environment. Where most books on vision consider it as a passive activity, this book focuses on vision as an ‘active’ process. It goes beyond most accounts of vision where the focus is on seeing, to provide an account of seeing AND looking. The book starts by pointing out the weaknesses in our traditional approaches to vision and the reason we need this new approach. It then gives a thorough description of basic details of the visual and oculomotor systems necessary to understand active vision. The book goes on to show how this approach can give a new perspective on visual attention, and how the approach has progressed in the areas of visual orienting, reading, visual search, scene perception, and neuropsychology. Finally, the book summarizes progress by showing how this approach sheds new light on the old problem of how we maintain perception of a stable visual world.Less

Active Vision : The Psychology of Looking and Seeing

John M FindlayIain D Gilchrist

Published in print: 2003-08-07

More than one third of the human brain is devoted to the processes of seeing — vision is after all the main way in which we gather information about the world. But human vision is a dynamic process during which the eyes continually sample the environment. Where most books on vision consider it as a passive activity, this book focuses on vision as an ‘active’ process. It goes beyond most accounts of vision where the focus is on seeing, to provide an account of seeing AND looking. The book starts by pointing out the weaknesses in our traditional approaches to vision and the reason we need this new approach. It then gives a thorough description of basic details of the visual and oculomotor systems necessary to understand active vision. The book goes on to show how this approach can give a new perspective on visual attention, and how the approach has progressed in the areas of visual orienting, reading, visual search, scene perception, and neuropsychology. Finally, the book summarizes progress by showing how this approach sheds new light on the old problem of how we maintain perception of a stable visual world.

In everyday life, and particularly in the modern workplace, information technology and automation increasingly mediate, augment, and sometimes even interfere with how humans interact with their ...
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In everyday life, and particularly in the modern workplace, information technology and automation increasingly mediate, augment, and sometimes even interfere with how humans interact with their environment. How to understand and support cognition in human–technology interaction is both a practically and socially relevant problem. The chapters in this volume frame this problem in adaptive terms: How are behavior and cognition adapted, or perhaps ill-adapted, to the demands and opportunities of an environment where interaction is mediated by tools and technology? The text draws heavily on the work of Egon Brunswik, a pioneer in ecological and cognitive psychology, as well as on modern refinements and extensions of Brunswikian ideas, including Hammond's Social Judgment Theory, Gigerenzer's Ecological Rationality and Anderson's Rational Analysis. Inspired by Brunswik's view of cognition as “coming to terms” with the “casual texture” of the external world, the chapters here provide quantitative and computational models and measures for studying how people come to terms with an increasingly technological ecology, and provide insights for supporting cognition and performance through design, training, and other interventions.Less

Alex Kirlik

Published in print: 2009-10-01

In everyday life, and particularly in the modern workplace, information technology and automation increasingly mediate, augment, and sometimes even interfere with how humans interact with their environment. How to understand and support cognition in human–technology interaction is both a practically and socially relevant problem. The chapters in this volume frame this problem in adaptive terms: How are behavior and cognition adapted, or perhaps ill-adapted, to the demands and opportunities of an environment where interaction is mediated by tools and technology? The text draws heavily on the work of Egon Brunswik, a pioneer in ecological and cognitive psychology, as well as on modern refinements and extensions of Brunswikian ideas, including Hammond's Social Judgment Theory, Gigerenzer's Ecological Rationality and Anderson's Rational Analysis. Inspired by Brunswik's view of cognition as “coming to terms” with the “casual texture” of the external world, the chapters here provide quantitative and computational models and measures for studying how people come to terms with an increasingly technological ecology, and provide insights for supporting cognition and performance through design, training, and other interventions.

The central problem in the study of addiction is to explain why people repeatedly behave in ways they know are bad for them. For much of the previous century and until the present day, the majority ...
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The central problem in the study of addiction is to explain why people repeatedly behave in ways they know are bad for them. For much of the previous century and until the present day, the majority of scientific and medical attempts to solve this problem were couched in terms of involuntary behavior; if people behave in ways they do not want, then this must be because the behavior is beyond their control and outside the realm of choice. An opposing tradition, which finds current support among scientists and scholars as well as members of the general public, is that so-called addictive behavior reflects an ordinary choice just like any other and that the concept of addiction is a myth. To these polarized views of addiction, the editors and chapter authors of this volume say “a plague on both your houses.” There has been an increasing recognition in recent literature on addiction that restricting possible conceptions of it to either of these extreme positions is unhelpful and is retarding progress on understanding the nature of addiction and what could be done about it. This book contains a range of views from philosophy, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, and the law on what exactly this middle ground between free choice and no choice consists of and what its implications are for theory, practice, and policy on addiction. The result amounts to a profound change in our thinking on addiction and how its devastating consequences can be ameliorated.Less

Addiction and Choice : Rethinking the relationship

Published in print: 2016-09-22

The central problem in the study of addiction is to explain why people repeatedly behave in ways they know are bad for them. For much of the previous century and until the present day, the majority of scientific and medical attempts to solve this problem were couched in terms of involuntary behavior; if people behave in ways they do not want, then this must be because the behavior is beyond their control and outside the realm of choice. An opposing tradition, which finds current support among scientists and scholars as well as members of the general public, is that so-called addictive behavior reflects an ordinary choice just like any other and that the concept of addiction is a myth. To these polarized views of addiction, the editors and chapter authors of this volume say “a plague on both your houses.” There has been an increasing recognition in recent literature on addiction that restricting possible conceptions of it to either of these extreme positions is unhelpful and is retarding progress on understanding the nature of addiction and what could be done about it. This book contains a range of views from philosophy, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, and the law on what exactly this middle ground between free choice and no choice consists of and what its implications are for theory, practice, and policy on addiction. The result amounts to a profound change in our thinking on addiction and how its devastating consequences can be ameliorated.

Of the 33 million adolescents in the United States, almost 10 million are at risk of failing to become responsible adults. They attend schools that do not serve their needs, lack the support of ...
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Of the 33 million adolescents in the United States, almost 10 million are at risk of failing to become responsible adults. They attend schools that do not serve their needs, lack the support of caring adults, and, as a result, are alienated from mainstream society. African-American and Hispanic children, increasingly segregated in disadvantaged neighborhoods, are particularly vulnerable. This book takes a close look at the lives of young people, identifies some of their problems, and presents solutions based on state-of-the-art prevention and treatment strategies. The chapters examine important issues in adolescents' lives—sex, violence, drugs, health, mental health, and education. Reviewing successful prevention programs and policy studies, they demonstrate that we know what to do to prevent high-risk behaviors: young people need to establish relationships with adults; parents need to be involved in their children's lives; and programs need to be comprehensive, sensitive to cultural differences, and staffed by highly trained personnel. The chapters argue that turning our backs on adolescents will lead to disturbing consequences: the achievement gap will grow, outcomes will worsen, school systems will struggle with the growing disparities, and we as a nation will fall behind the rest of the world in our capacity to educate our youth. If, however, we decide that we want a better quality of life for our children, we will ensure that every young person has access to an excellent education. Schools, youth workers, and parents cannot alone provide a better quality of life for our adolescents, but each must play a major role, and all must work together.Less

Adolescence : Growing Up in America Today

Joy G. DryfoosCarol Barkin

Published in print: 2006-08-31

Of the 33 million adolescents in the United States, almost 10 million are at risk of failing to become responsible adults. They attend schools that do not serve their needs, lack the support of caring adults, and, as a result, are alienated from mainstream society. African-American and Hispanic children, increasingly segregated in disadvantaged neighborhoods, are particularly vulnerable. This book takes a close look at the lives of young people, identifies some of their problems, and presents solutions based on state-of-the-art prevention and treatment strategies. The chapters examine important issues in adolescents' lives—sex, violence, drugs, health, mental health, and education. Reviewing successful prevention programs and policy studies, they demonstrate that we know what to do to prevent high-risk behaviors: young people need to establish relationships with adults; parents need to be involved in their children's lives; and programs need to be comprehensive, sensitive to cultural differences, and staffed by highly trained personnel. The chapters argue that turning our backs on adolescents will lead to disturbing consequences: the achievement gap will grow, outcomes will worsen, school systems will struggle with the growing disparities, and we as a nation will fall behind the rest of the world in our capacity to educate our youth. If, however, we decide that we want a better quality of life for our children, we will ensure that every young person has access to an excellent education. Schools, youth workers, and parents cannot alone provide a better quality of life for our adolescents, but each must play a major role, and all must work together.